Obamacare: Orwellian and Malevolent At the Same Time

You’ve got to hand it to President Obama: He isn’t bashful about showing his true colors for all to see in an election year.

So obsessed is Obama about imposing Obamacare on us that he has been brazen about showing the freedom-crushing nature of his prize policy triumph just as the Supreme Court convenes to judge its constitutionality. A few weeks ago, the president launched a frontal assault against religious conscience and rights with his ham-fisted contraception ploy, and just last week he used Obamacare to go after the state of Texas.

Before examining Team Obama’s Lone Star nastiness, let’s consider the Orwellian character of Obamacare’s official name: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

How “affordable” is Obamacare? According to updated calculations by the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of Obamacare for the next 10 years will be $1.76 trillion—nearly twice what President Obama had claimed. Team Obama, we know, has long been aware of Obamacare’s burdensome costs, which is why they have granted over a hundred waivers to unions and other political allies.

“Patient protection” is an even more cynical distortion than “affordable care.” My first brush with the patient care provided by government-managed health care came when I was at Oxford in the ‘70s. An acquaintance needed surgery for a hand injury. When Sam woke up from his anesthesia, he found himself alone in a storeroom. He waited for hours for someone to look in on him, but his only visitor was a solitary rat. Finally, realizing that he was on his own, he got up and left the hospital.

With the pending imposition of Obamacare, I have paid closer attention to news reports about government-run health care. In the last two years, I have encountered these examples of government-provided “patient protection” in action:

1) More people are discharged from Britain’s healthcare system in a state of malnutrition than are admitted with that condition.

2) To save money, British health bureaucrats stopped approving the purchase of custom-made footwear for diabetics with crippled feet, and instead ordered their feet amputated.

3) One-sixth of all deaths in the United Kingdom are the result of the medical authorities’ decisions to withhold scarce resources from patients (usually seniors) under their care.

Would Obamacare’s 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) actually protect patients’ welfare? The panel members would operate as “super czars,” issuing decrees without external review, comment, or public notice. They would be exempt from judicial review—totally unaccountable. That unelected officials should hold the power of life and death over citizens is a monstrosity that belongs in a totalitarian system, not a democratic republic.

Nationalized health care is a favorite goal of socialists, communists, and other power-mongers because of the leverage it gives them over people. When control of the necessities of life—such as food and health care—is ceded to government, citizens and their liberty are vulnerable. One example: Three years ago, when Honduras’ president, Mel Zelaya, tried to revise the Honduran constitution to perpetuate his presidency, one of the clubs he wielded was his threat to withhold state-provided health care from anyone who opposed him.